Ontario’s Clean Water Act

Ontario’s Clean Water Act helps protect drinking water from source to tap with a multi-barrier approach that stops contaminants from entering sources of drinking water – lakes, rivers and aquifers.

Ontario’s Clean Water Act:

requires that local communities – through local Source Protection Committees – assess existing and potential threats to their water, and that they set out and implement the actions needed to reduce or eliminate these threats

empowers communities to take action to prevent threats from becoming significant

requires public participation on every local source protection plan – the planning process for source protection is open to anyone in the community

requires that all plans and actions are based on sound science.

The Clean Water Act also introduces the Ontario Drinking Water Stewardship Program which offers financial assistance to farmers, landowners, and small or medium businesses for activities that reduce threats to local drinking water sources.